1. Technical Field
The present application relates generally to an improved data processing system and method. More specifically, the present application is directed to a system and method for providing capacity upgrade on-demand of I/O adapters.
2. Description of Related Art
For purchasers of computing systems, the upgradeability of the computing systems is of great importance. That is, purchasers want to know that as their needs for computing system resources change, their purchased computing systems are able to be upgraded to meet their changing needs. Typically, such upgradeability has been provided by way of expansion ports and removable devices that may be attached to the computing system via such ports.
With high end computing systems, such as server computing systems and the like, upgrading typically requires that the owner of the server computing system order additional devices from a producer of such devices and have a customer engineer from that producer install the device in the server computing system. For example, if a customer wishes to expand their input/output (I/O) resources, the customer must order a new I/O adapter from the manufacturer of the I/O adapter, wait for delivery of the part, and then schedule a customer engineer from the manufacturer to come to the location of the server computing system to install the new I/O adapter into the server computing system. If the owner of the server computing system wants the new I/O adapter to be installed while the server computing system is running, the owner must reserve an expansion slot of the server computing system manually before initial program load and then follow a concurrent maintenance procedure to add the I/O adapter, i.e. the field replaceable unit (FRU).
It can be seen from the above that the current method of adding resources to a computing system is costly and time consuming. If the manufacturer does not charge explicitly for the customer engineer's time to install the new device into the server computing system, the cost will typically be passed on to the owner of the server computing system in other ways, e.g., in the cost of the server computing system itself, in the cost of the new device, or the like. Moreover, the owner of the server computing system must spend a large amount of time waiting for delivery of the new device and waiting for the customer engineer to come to the site of the server computing system to install the new device. Thus, while the owner of the server computing system may have an immediate need for additional resources, this need may not be able to be met immediately.